National Train Enquiry System (NTES) is an integral part of Integrated Coaching Management System developed and maintained by CRIS. Although Indian Railways make all out efforts to run all passenger carrying trains as per their schedules and maintain their punctuality , at times for reasons beyond the control of Indian Railways trains get delayed, are rescheduled from their starting stations, cancelled or diverted to another route resulting in change in the actual Arrival/Departure time from their scheduled time. To save the inconvenience caused to Rail users due to these changes in train running, National Train Enquiry System (NTES) provides information to public about expected Arrival/Departure of trains at each stopping station, train schedule information, information about cancelled trains, diverted trains, and also platform berthing information at major stations.

The main goal and objective behind NTES system to provide timely and reliable information to general public through user friendly interfaces and PAN India accessibility has been achieved to a large extent and now the information is conveniently and reliably available to public all over the country through various delivery channels i.e. through web browsing, through mobile phone or landline (voice and SMS) and also in person through face to face enquiry and displays at all IR stations. NTES has won National Award for e-Governance 2010-2011 for Innovative use of ICT by PSUs for customer's benefit and “National Train Enquiry System (NTES)” was adjudged as a Finalist in the Computerworld Honors Program instituted by the Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation, USA.

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Indian Railways normally receive about 2 lakh queries each day on the website (http://www.trainenquiry.com) for the current status of trains, besides large number in-person enquiries at the stations.
The user interface for www.trainenquiry.com has been tested extensively and has been generally well-received by the users. It allows search for a train by number or name, any stations on its route, type of train, etc. Even partial inputs (in any combination) are accepted making it very easy for a user to identify his train and to obtain its status. The website also works on a large number of smartphones and tablets.
Users can also obtain the information by sending SMS to 139 or calling to 139 IVRS or speak with the customer care executive on 139.
Both the website and 139 systems are powered by the National Train Enquiry System (NTES),which directly and automatically sources information from the Control Office Applications that plan and monitor train operations.

The core NTES application has been developed in Client/ Server Architecture using C language and Sybase ASE version. Application is running on IBM X-series server with Linux as operating system. The servers are in High Availability mode at each site. The train schedule/running data is available at 4 NTES sites (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata). Each site performs updates on the trains running status for its defined region through the data received from Control Office Applications (COA) using EAI tool TIBCO. The data is then replicated to all other sites from the local site using the Sybase replication server. Replication of data serves two purposes. Firstly, actual train running information is available to public through all the delivery channels and secondly the data is available from other sites in case of failures/ system down on a particular site. In addition to replication of data between the site wise databases of NTES application, the Sybase replication server replicates data from all four sites to centralized database of call center application hosted on ORACLE database.

The web interface of NTES www.trainenquiry.com being used most widely is written in Microsoft DOT net technology with IIS as application server and the database is Microsoft SQL server. The SQL server integration services (SSIS) is used for replicating data from Sybase to Microsoft SQL server.

The National Train Enquiry System (NTES), as part of the Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) within CRIS, is currently led by Shiv Kumar Prasad, General Manager, an IRTS officer with about 20 years of experience in the field of Railway operations. The technical team is led by Priya Srivastava, Principal Project Engineer. Priya has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry.